


Safe With Me

by choriarty



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Backstory Swap, Comfort, Cuddling, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, PTSD, Seheron, descriptions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 09:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6900973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/choriarty/pseuds/choriarty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a world where Dorian is a burned out war veteran from Seheron and The Iron Bull left the Qun for love.</p><p>Dorian keeps getting asked how he lost his eye, and he never tells the same story about it twice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe With Me

**Author's Note:**

> this idea had been festering in the back of my head for months so i decided just FUCK IT im gonna write this cause im sad that my fave fic hasnt updated SO ILL WRITE MY OWN HOMOSEXUALS TYVM
> 
> Inspired by "Self-Control" by taispeantas_laethuil. Please PLEASE read it, it's not finished but I looooove it so much.
> 
> also i wrote this at 1 am with no beta, please comment if u find anything wrong and ill fix it. i just want it out of my head and onto the page

Dorian talked about Seheron like it was all some script he had memorized over and over and over again. His smile would fade and he would get a look in his eyes. Not glazed, not exactly. More as if he was looking at someone behind the person he was speaking to, or like he was addressing an audience. 

It made sense, after he talked about being paraded around by the Magisterium like some story book hero. 

Bull didn’t like to think about how anything anyone asked-- anything he asked-- was probably grilled out of him before by some old crone in skirts. 

And people asked. Anyone would, if they didn’t know Dorian. If they didn’t know how many times his friends had had to shakes him out of a daydream, if they didn’t know about how lightly he slept (if he slept at all). They saw his clothes, the scars shown by a missing sleeve, and they wanted the story behind it.

Dorian answered clinically. If he wanted to be trusted in a foreign country then he had to be open.

But he never talked about his eye.

It was the thing people wanted to know most about. Seheron’s Dread Battlemage shows up at the Inquisitions front door with a gleaming silver eyepatch; it was a scene out of a book. The eye was the first thing, and sometimes the only thing, people saw.

“It’s not a very good story,” Dorian would wave off.

“Quite boring, actually.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“A gentleman never kisses and tells.”

“I’d rather not.”

But people kept asking, so he began telling them.

“I tripped.”

“My eye jumped out of my head one day.”

“I just woke up like this.”

“I’m missing an eye?”

“I sacrificed it in order to gain unparalleled power.”

And they would always reply “Really?!”

And he would say “No.”

Until people stopped asking.

“You don’t have to tell a story every time,” Bull said to Dorian one night, long after Dorian had become comfortable staying the night. “You’re allowed to not want to talk about it.”

He looked like he was trying to figure out what Bull was talking about, until it hit him. Dorian grimaced at the idea. “Well, when I tried that, someone asked if I had used it for blood magic. Not that it made any sense, but it’s not like the everyday Fereldan has witnessed dozens of mages gut themselves to summon a demon before.”

Bull pulled his Kadan in closer and tucked them both in, feeling Dorian start to relax. There was a mumbled apology into his bosom, and Bull kissed his hair. “You’ve more than proven yourself here, and anyone who thinks otherwise will have me to deal with. Not to mention the Inquisitor and, oh I don’t know, the entire inner circle. I’m pretty sure that Sera would shoot anyone who hurt your feelings, Kadan.”

Dorian chuckled weakly and burrowed deeper into the embrace. “Perhaps.”

 

Then there was soft silence, and Bull listened to the slow breathing of his Kadan until sleep tugged at the edges of his mind and beckoned him. He was just about to fall under when he heard a voice.

“It was me.”

Bull was suddenly more awake than before, but he didn’t dare move. He didn’t dare speak. The Iron Bull only placed a sleepy kiss on Dorian’s forehead and waiting for him to continue.

“I took out my own eye,” he whispered. It didn’t sound like any story he had told before, recited again and again to politicians. It was fresh and watery. “It was only a month before I left the island. There was a girl-- two girls, natives. The block had just been struck by a volley of fireballs and they were cowering in a corner. The taller one, they must have been sisters, was holding her younger sibling. 

I entered the building with another, we were going to check it for hostiles. My partner went to them while I searched. I wasn’t looking, I must have missed something, because the girl took out a knife and stabbed him. I heard him gurgle his last breath, and when I turned around I could no longer control my own actions. She used blood magic, gave me her knife, and made me gouge out my own eye. I couldn’t-- I didn’t--”

Bull held Dorian tightly and cooed, trying to calm his trembling. He could feel wetness on his bare chest, and more than ever he wished that cursed island had never existed.He wished that damned place had never gotten a hold on his Kadan and hurt him.

“Shh, you’re here, Dorian. You’re with me, in our room, in Skyhold. Come back to me.”

“I-I’m still here, you idiot,” Dorian said weakly. “You should have told me you were awake.”

“Sorry, Kadan. I’ll tell you next time.”

“Fine, you are forgiven. Not that I could ever be mad at you for such a thing as listening to me.”

“You gonna be okay?”

“Mm, perhaps.”

“Perhaps?”

“This thing you’re doing seems to be helping.”

“You mean cuddling, Kadan?”

“Yes, that thing where you hold me close to your pillowy chest.”

“Aw, don’t be like that.”

“I happen to like your pillowy chest, Amatus.”

“Hmm, maybe I could learn to like hearing that. But only from you.”

“Don’t worry. Your soft bosom is safe with me.”

Bull laughed and felt his gut grow warm when he heard his Kadan join him. Dorian shuffled up in the bed and gave Bull a kiss on the lips, which made his gut warm even more. Eventually they broke apart, soft and sated with affection. There was more shuffling and shifting as the blanket was brought higher to their necks and Dorian was tucked into his large lover’s embrace.

If there was one thing his fading consciousness knew as it slipped into sleep, it was that he was going to keep his Kadan safe with him as well.


End file.
